Chapter 3

I'm backin the hospital room, with Dr. Xipil and the burly security guys watching me intently, ready to subdue me in case I became a psychotic killer.

I paste a smile on my lips, even though I'm freaking out. The last thing I need is for Dr. Xipil to stab me with that syringe he's holding.

"What happened?" he asks with a worried expression.

"It didn't work," I say and place my hand back on Mom's forehead. It's strangely clammy. "I'm going to try again."

"Wait—"

Tuning out the gnome doctor's objections, I will myself to return into Mom's dreams.

Nothing happens.

Huh.

I touch my furry wristband—Pom—trying to get into the dream world that way.

Nothing. There's no scent of ozone, no sensation of falling that comes along with the transition into a dreamwalking trance. I might as well be touching a rock.

I grip Mom's hand and strain harder. Still nothing. Eventually, I have to accept it: The violent dream world expulsion Mom performed on me robbed me of my powers for the day.

Unbelievable.

I didn't realize such a thing was possible—or that Mom could do it. In general, her dreamwalking powers seem to be much stronger than mine.

What's extra amazing is that Mom is this strong despite having lived here on Gomorrah for as long as I can remember. Us Cognizant slowly lose our powers unless we regularly travel to Otherlands that contain humans, like Earth.

Dr. Xipil exchanges a glance with the guard nearest me. "Are you sure you're okay?"

Puck. He's worried I am homicidal.

I force another smile to my lips. "I'm fine. I'm just disappointed I failed."

"As I was trying to tell you, you didn't just fail." The doctor nods at the screens monitoring Mom's heartbeat and brain activity. "Your dreamwalking drove her vitals through the roof."

"What?" I peer at the monitors, wishing I had medical training. I know a lot about sleep, but not much else. "How?"

"I don't know, but she had a dangerously fast heartbeat, shortness of breath, excessive sweating and trembling—all signs of a nocturnal panic attack, but without the awakening that typically follows."

My stomach sinks as I look Mom over. Her forehead is beaded with sweat, and her bronzed skin has a gray tinge. "So what do I do?"

Dr. Xipil adjusts his breathing mask, an apparatus all gnomes wear due to their anatomy. "Well… it's a unique case. Your powers may still be the best way to wake her, but you might want to let her body recover for a day or two before you try anything else."

I take a deep breath. "Actually, I don't know if it's worth trying again." I explain my theory that Mom may be much more powerful than I am.

He gestures for the security guys to leave. "Maybe you can reason with her next time?"

"I told you, she doesn't want me dreamwalking in her." I look at Mom, my chest squeezing with guilt at the ashen hue of her face. "Maybe I should've listened."

Dr. Xipil readjusts his mask. "I'll see what we can do on our end. Meanwhile, we have to reattach some life support."

On my wrist, Pom turns black—reflecting my emotions this time. I swallow against the bitter lump in my throat. "I understand."

"You might also want to talk to a sleep expert," the doctor says. "Or find another dreamwalker."

I blink at him. "I don't know another dreamwalker." We're not exactly thick on the ground.

He regards me speculatively. "In that case, have you ever heard of Dr. Cipactli?"

I shake my head.

"He's a sleep expert with a great reputation. He heads up the ZIZZ Sleep Clinic." Dr. Xipil's chin lifts. "Not surprising, really, as he's a fellow gnome."

I'm genuinely impressed. "Yet another gnome in a medical field?"

Dr. Xipil huffs through his mask. "I was as surprised as you. I know I'm an outlier. I became a doctor when I lost my parents to a rare genetic disease. Still, even I can't fathom why a fellow gnome would want to study sleep of all things."

He can say that again. Gnomes usually thrive in technology-heavy fields. My friend Itzel, for instance, is obsessed with space exploration and gadgets of all kinds, and her famous grandfather, Cadmael, invented the Vega reactors that run everything on Gomorrah.

"I'll talk to this Dr. Cipactli," I say.

"Great." Dr. Xipil makes some gestures in the air. "I just sent you his info."

"Thank you. Can you also give it to me verbally? My comms died, and I haven't replaced them." Actually, my comms were crushed by a vampire on Earth—but who's keeping track.

Dr. Xipil tells me where I need to go and adds, "I'll talk to Dr. Cipactli right after I leave, and send him all the information about your mother."

I thank him again, and he leaves the room. I clasp Mom's hand again. "Bye," I tell her softly. "I'll see you soon, okay?"

There's no reply. With a heavy heart, I head out.

* * *

As I walkpast the nurses in the hallway, I ponder why Mom kept killing me in her dream. The best answer I can come up with is that even though I was invisible, she'd detected my dreamwalking presence and it'd angered her. After all, my whole life I'd promised her I wouldn't enter her dreams.

But why was she killing me at different ages? Why not just push me out the way she did when I made my presence known?

More importantly, should I respect her wishes and not go back?

I try to imagine leaving her hooked up on those machines indefinitely, and everything inside me revolts at the thought. Even if I can come up with the money to keep her in the paid hospital long term, she'll eventually waste away, machines or not. If I don't wake her, she's as good as dead.

So that's that. Unless the sleep expert can come up with another solution, I'm going to have to figure out a way to gain more power, go back, and try waking her up again. I even have an idea when it comes to power gathering—

The hospital doors slide open, and I look around.

This is the Health District, named so due to the slew of paid hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and research centers all around. It vaguely resembles Gardens by the Bay in Singapore, as the water-collecting trees here look a lot like the Supertrees there.

My destination is walkable, so I make my way through the busy crowds of fellow Cognizant. After Earth, seeing so many non-humanoid pedestrians is a little jarring, especially when I spot a couple of weres in their animal shapes.

The building where the sleep clinic resides is small and reminds me of the Freedom Tower in New York. I go inside and take the elevator to the sleep clinic floor. An elf secretary tells me the soonest I can see Dr. Cipactli is tomorrow afternoon, no matter how urgent my issue is.

Cursing under my breath at the delay, I leave the building and locate the nearest store where I can buy a replacement comms device; without it, I feel like a cavewoman.

"Would you like to check out the newest model?" the uber saleswoman asks me with a megawatt smile.

I look around. "Is there a place I can check my cc balance?"

She nods at a nearby mirror, and I realize it's a screen in disguise.

I walk up to the screen, authenticate myself, and have a look at my money.

Wait a second. The number here is much bigger than I expected.

It doesn't take long for me to figure out what happened. Valerian paid nearly double the amount we agreed upon. Wow. He's given me bonuses for a job well done before, but never this much.

Once I have my comms, I'll need to thank him. With this amount, I can pay Mom's outstanding bills and still have enough left over to consider the newest, most expensive model of comms.

"Show me," I say to the uber woman.

She takes out a sleek-looking comms device I've never seen before and opens it like a clam shell—another novelty.

Inside the comms are almost invisible earphones, two contact lenses, and ten clip-on nails.

I examine it all in awe. "I've heard these were in development, but didn't realize they were out."

My last set of comms interfaced via special glasses and gloves, so I couldn't openly use them on Earth. This is so much stealthier.

"Put them on," she says with a knowing grin.

I reach for the contact lenses, then yank my hand back. "Are these new?"

She cocks her head. "Are you from some Otherland?" Before I can tell her I'm local, she adds, "These comms have hygieia built in—a cleaning technology."

I know what she's talking about, of course. Hygieia is why things like salmonella are extinct on Gomorrah. Her answer also tells me the stuff was in other people's eyes before—which is a problem, even though I know my concern is not rational. It's like drinking out of a sterilized toilet on Earth—icky, at least to me.

She must read my mind because she smiles sagely and takes out a sealed unit.

"I don't promise to buy it," I say reluctantly.

"That's fine." She hands it to me.

Right. She knows the next customer won't have my qualms.

I unwrap the device as if it were a Christmas gift, put in the contacts, and whistle under my breath. They're extremely comfortable—as in, I don't feel them at all.

The saleswoman smiles wider. She knows I'm almost on the hook.

The earphones are amazing. Once in my ears, it's impossible to see them, and I can still hear external sounds.

I hold the nail things to my nails, and they latch on as if magnetized. The result isn't bad at all—a bit like if I got blue gel nails on Earth.

"Are the gestures the same as with the gloves?" I ask.

She nods, so I gesture for the comms to activate.

The usual spherical icons appear in the air in front of me. With glasses, these looked like Star Wars holograms, but the contacts make everything sharper, almost real.

I gesture at the login app, and once I'm in, the interface changes to the way I'd previously set it up, with icons that look like impossible shapes, such as the Penrose triangle. It gives me the feeling that I'm in the dream world.

I have a ton of messages waiting, but before I check them, I bring up the paying app and say, "I'll take this."

"Pleasure doing business with you." The saleswoman grins her widest smile yet.

As I walk out, I check some of my messages. Most are from the hospital, telling me I must pay the bills. I do that and then craft a message to Valerian. He's instrumental to my new idea on how to gather more power—at least that's what I tell myself.

This has nothing to do with what almost happened between us the other day.

Nothing at all.

To my disappointment, he doesn't instantly reply. Nor does he reply by the time I get into a car. Well, he does spend half his time on Earth and half on Gomorrah, so hopefully he's just away and not ignoring me.

The car drops me off by our building, a modest skyscraper with one hundred and fifty floors.

Stepping into the apartment is an odd experience after being away. The first thing that stands out, as usual, is how few personal touches Mom gave the place. The walls are bare, and the kitchen is immaculately clean. There are showrooms at furniture stores with more personality. If I were to enter Mom's bedroom, it would be even more bland—just walls and a bed. Sometimes I wonder if Mom thought that by decorating, she might accidentally reveal to me some secret from her past.

I enter my own room. Like inside my virtual reality interface—and dream world—I have a lot of art that features visual paradoxes and surreal scenarios. Works reminiscent of Earth's M. C. Escher and Salvador Dalí slideshow on screens that are my room's walls. On the ancient portable screen that I borrowed from Mom, I spot the cover of the textbook on video game design I was reading before my life turned upside down. My unmade bed is floating a couple of inches off the ground thanks to magnets and superconductivity, and it looks ridiculously inviting.

I guess those four months without sleep are still weighing on me.

Yawning, I check to see if Valerian has replied.

He hasn't.

I guess I might as well use the wait time to chip away at my sleep debt.

I program my comms to ring loudly if I get a message, and I set an alarm so I don't miss my appointment with Dr. Cipactli. I doubt I'll need the latter—it would mean I'd slept over twenty hours. Still, better safe than sorry.

Picking up a hygieia wand, I properly disinfect myself and plop onto the bed. Immediately, my tense muscles relax. Earth's best memory foam mattresses are a joke compared to smart beds on Gomorrah. I feel like I've been enveloped in a cloud, with the floating sensation completing that illusion.

Not surprisingly, I go under faster than if I'd inhaled sleeping gas.

* * *

I waketo the blaring of an alarm.

Puck. I slept all the way into the next day, and now I need to rush to see Dr. Cipactli.

I gleefully use my highly sanitary, eco-friendly bathroom. My least favorite part of Earth is all that filthy water wasted as part of the plumbing. The only water we have on Gomorrah is the drinking kind coming out of the faucets, and I imbibe it with gusto. Next, I hygieia my body and teeth, put on a nondescript black shirt and dark cargo pants—one of my many outfits calibrated to fit both Earth and Gomorrah fashions—and rush out of the building. Once on the street, I get some mannaand jump into a self-driving car.

Munching on the yumminess, I realize I didn't have a single dream in over twenty hours of sleep. In general, I feel great. Way better than before I slept—which tells me I needed the whole twenty hours, if not more.

The car stops, and I go up to Dr. Cipactli's office.

"I have an appointment," I tell the elf secretary.

With a polite smile, she presses some button only she can see in her VR. "One moment."

A few seconds later, the tallest gnome I've ever seen steps out of the nearby office. Gnomes grow tall in adolescence and then shrink as they grow older, so this specimen must be young—which can still mean up to a thousand years old given the typical gnome lifespan.

Like most other gnomes, this one needs to wear a special mask due to the respiratory problems they develop on worlds with air that's about twenty percent oxygen—like Earth and Gomorrah. According to Itzel, these breathing issues are what initially drove gnomes to explore technology.

Dr. Cipactli's mask is unusual in that you can't really see much of his face under its shiny black surface. If Felix were here, I bet he'd say this mask makes Dr. Cipactli look like Darth Vader.

"Bailey," he says in a deep voice distorted by the mask—strengthening the Vader comparison. "It's a pleasure to meet you." He extends his hand in an Earth-like greeting.

Ignoring the proffered appendage, I curtsy—which usually lets me avoid skin-to-skin contact.

It works. Dr. Cipactli inclines his head and says, "Step into my office."

I follow him in and do a double take.

His wall screens slideshow horror-movie-worthy images that remind me of the creatures I've met in subdreams.

"I study nightmares," he explains, noticing my shock. "Which is why I got excited when Dr. Xipil told me about your case."

I take a seat in a hovering chair and cross my legs. "Oh?"

He examines me as if I were a celebrity—or an exotic bug. "I've never met a dreamwalker before."

I smile uncomfortably. "We are pretty rare."

"Exceedingly." He sits behind his desk. "Which is why, in lieu of payment, I hope you'll demonstrate your powers."

Payment, right. This isn't a free hospital, either. I uncross my legs. "I'd be happy to. The only issue is that you're a gnome. You're not the first one to ask this of me, and I'll tell you the same thing I told them: It may or may not work."

Gnomes are renowned for being immune to many Cognizant powers. Vampire glamour doesn't work on them, tricksters can't influence their fate directly, illusionists fail to make them see their illusions, seers can't see them in their visions of the future—the list goes on and on.

Dr. Cipactli nods eagerly. "Gnome resistance to dreamwalking is why I want to try this. My grandmother told me it would work if a gnome gave consent—but didn't explain further. Once I grew up, I realized what she said doesn't make sense. If I'm sleeping—and therefore unconscious—how can I give my consent?"

Hmm. Interesting. "Maybe you agree I dreamwalk in you while you're awake?"

"Maybe." He rubs the chin part of his mask. "But wouldn't that give you unlimited dream access forever and ever? Or can I revoke my consent after I wake up? Or maybe even during the dreamwalking session itself?"

I smile. "Now I'm actually curious to do this."

"Excellent." He leaps to his feet. "How about we try it right now?"

"One second." I turn away from him and use Pom to go in and out of the dream world.

Good. My powers have recovered.

I turn back to him. "Now's fine. Do you have a place to sleep?"

"This is a sleep clinic," he says and strides to the door.

I follow him through a corridor and into a large hall brimming with floating beds. On each bed is a sleeper. Some have IV bags attached to them, some don't. Many are also strapped to their beds, like dangerous madmen.

What the puck?

Then I recognize one of them, and things become clearer.

It's Gertrude, the New York Councilor who hates my guts. She suffers from a condition that sounds like REM Sleep Behavior Disorder—which combines poorly with her ability to give gangrene to anyone she touches. That must be what's going on with the other tied-up patients as well: They have some dangerous sleep disorders.

In any case, I'm glad Gertrude found this clinic. I recently learned that she killed someone she cared about in her sleep, so it would be good if she got the help she needs. I just hope she doesn't wake up and see me; not only does she hate me for not being able to solve her problem with my dreamwalking, but I knocked her unconscious the other day, and she might hold a grudge.

"How about here?" Dr. Cipactli points at an empty bed.

I cast a wary glance at Gertrude. "I'd prefer to do it someplace more private."

Nodding in understanding, the gnome leads me to an empty room with a bed and medical equipment that reminds me of Mom's setup.

"Would this work?" he asks.

"Sure. Are you going to be able to sleep on demand, or do you have sleeping gas on hand?"

"Something even better." He takes out a small gizmo. "A drug developed for my research. Puts the subject right into REM sleep."

Huh. Sounds like the drug Leal, the dreamwalker from the New York Council, developed. Of course, Leal's drug had an itsy-bitsy side-effect: whoever took it never woke up again. I assume Dr. Cipactli's drug isn't like that; otherwise, I'm about to partake in the strangest form of assisted suicide in history.

"I'll need to remove my mask to use this," he says gravely. There's a strange look in his eyes—embarrassment, maybe? "Will you please put it back on my face?"

I nod vigorously.

The gnome lies down and slides off his mask.

Poor guy. I now see why he wears a mask that covers so much. He must've been in an accident or something; the right side of his face is twisted by scars that look like a chemical burn.

He points the gizmo at his face and activates it.

There's a distinct hiss.

The medicine is odorless and seems to take effect immediately. His eyes start to move rapidly behind their lids.

I hygieia his mask on both sides and put it back on him. Then I hygieia his exposed forearm and place my fingers on it.

Here we go. I'm about to dreamwalk in a gnome.